


A Clean Break

by beanarie



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Bisexual Female Character of Color, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Families of Choice, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Joan and Sherlock working through their shit separately so they're better together, Major Character Injury, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-17
Updated: 2014-07-17
Packaged: 2018-02-09 04:58:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1969881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanarie/pseuds/beanarie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joan is determined to make Sherlock's departure a clean break, but anyone who knows her even a little can attest that disengaging with no looking back is not among her many talents. She remains in contact with nearly all of her exes, whether she claims to want to or not, she continues to practice medicine--though haphazardly--without a license, and she occasionally is still jolted out of a sound sleep because of a sober client who never took her off speed dial.</p><p>She tries, however.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Clean Break

There's a heaviness in the air that multiplies the tension in Joan's shoulders. She puts all her concentration into not getting up and walking out of Gregson's office before this conversation she really doesn't want to have is begun.

"MI6," Gregson says, drawing out each part of the acronym.

"That's what his note said," she replies crisply.

"Can't believe he'd just up and leave like that," Marcus says. He keeps shooting her these concerned glances. He gets one more before she politely asks if something's wrong with his neck.

Joan crosses one leg over the other. "He'll be back."

Both pairs of eyes lock onto her. "He put an ETA in your note?" Gregson asks, "Mine didn't have anything like that."

"I just have this feeling." She focuses on the captain's nameplate, inhaling deeply. "And when he does, I plan on being elsewhere."

"I do have some buddies who've been making noise about hoarding these miraculous consultants for myself," Gregson says, picking up the receiver of his phone. "Let's see what Captain Amanda Montrose thinks."

"The head of the Missing Persons Squad?" Joan says.

Taking on a second department means Joan is almost never bored, and it's wonderful because she doesn't have to cast about for ways to fill the hours left empty by Sherlock's departure. Missing Persons involves a different kind of pressure from the usual murders at Major Crimes. The clock on someone's life begins ticking long before she is called, and a lot of the time there are kids involved, or at least anxious friends or family members, desperate to get their loved one back safe. Joan has been on both sides of that. She uses the memories to motivate her.

~

A season goes by, then half of another. She doesn't think of Sherlock. She's too busy to long for anything but her bed.

Then she enters her modest but tasteful one bedroom to find him bleeding all over her couch.

Not bleeding, actually. Stabbed, yes, but closer examination of the wound in his side confirms his report that he managed to get the bleeding stopped on his own. "The pain from maintaining a steady pressure helped distract me from my usual misgivings about air travel," he says cheerfully. He claims he cannot go to the hospital because of the nature in which he was stabbed. In other words, there can't be any record tying him to whatever it is he did overseas.

"So give the ER an assumed name and pay in cash," she says. "You think anyone at Woodhull Hospital cares about your European spy drama? They're a little more concerned about gang violence and drunk drivers."

"Physical description," he protests through gritted teeth. "Watson, if I cannot obtain services here, I will make do with crazy glue and rubbing alcohol back at home. The decision is yours."

She gives a start when he says the word--home--and is nearly knocked over by a wave of nostalgia for the brownstone. The dim lights, dark floors, and the dozen rooms, each with its own distinct character. She's missed the bees, and visiting Clyde at Ms. Hudson's just isn't the same. But it was only ever Sherlock's space; she was merely one of the appliances. He's here because he needs something from her, of course. She clenches her jaw as she works, trying not to give away a thing, though her anger increases with every stitch.

By the time she finishes taping the bandage in place, he's nodded off. Not heartless enough to evict an exhausted man in pain, she lets him stay the night on the couch. About an hour before sunrise, she catches him shuffling toward the door, trying to leave without a word, which is just... typical. She takes a deep breath.

"I didn't think you were capable of hurting me like that." His back hunches, and he turns around. "Acting like I deserved some kind of punishment for refusing to provide everything that you wanted from me..." He makes a noise of protest that she completely ignores. "Though you did warn me. 'I can be cruel, there's no kinder, warmer me lurking under the surface...' But at least you acknowledged then that I had the right to look out for myself. Not sure when or why you took that off the table." She wipes away a tear, angrily, feeling betrayed by her own physiology. "You _left_. No discussion, no notice, apparently not a single moment's thought that after all that had happened I might need you, you were just gone."

He leans against the door, perfectly still. "What if I were to apologize?"

She gently prods him away from the door, opens it herself, and holds on, silently urging him out. "If you break into my home again, I will call the police. Please don't come back."

He steps into the hallway and turns to look at her. "I made a mistake, Watson."

She bites her lip. Another tear slips past. "I know you did. And it's one you'll keep making, over and over again, until I stop letting you. Goodbye, Sherlock."

~

Joan coaxes an unkempt, whimpering woman out of a dank basement. It takes so long that by the time they make it out to the street, the victim's sister and girlfriend have arrived. They envelop her in family and home. Joan walks away, letting them guide her to the waiting EMTs, and she watches from across the street.

She didn't have this. She had Mycroft on the other side of a black car with nearly opaque windows, spitting his story out in halting chunks. ("You're certain you're all right?" he asked in variations every ten minutes. "I'm fine," she kept saying, every time, distantly thinking she should've checked to make sure Marchef and his men were beyond her help.) She wonders what her mom or Oren would have done, how they would have reacted. Or her dad, either of her dads. They would have touched her. Mycroft didn't touch her at all after he removed the ties on her wrists.

She decides no one would mind if she took a seat on the stoop of the building right behind her.

"You all right?"

Joan suppresses a flinch as Captain Montrose comes closer. "That- that was me," she confesses, surprising herself. "A few months ago."

"You were kidnapped," Montrose says, crouching down.

"For two days. It had to do with a case. Sort of." Her hands are shaking. "I'm sorry. I'm not usually..."

"I know," Montrose says. "I would have remembered if you fell apart every time we concluded a case. Should I call one of the EMTs over?"

Joan hugs her midsection, resisting the urge to lean forward and press her face against her knees. "I'll be fine, I just a need a moment."

Montrose sits next to her on the stoop and silently watches the scene while Joan tries to mend the cracks in her composure. "If I'd known about your history, I might not have taken you on," she says eventually. "Empathy is vital, but I'd never want someone here if the work is triggering for them."

Joan looks up and the victim's sister waves to her before the back doors on the ambulance are closed. "I'm glad you didn't know."

Montrose touches Joan's arm. "So am I."

The compassion makes her eyes burn. Joan clears her throat. "Very few people do, actually. Know."

Joan watches the message sink in. No official report was ever made. No one in the NYPD has the slightest idea. In fact, everyone who knew is either dead or overseas.

Montrose looks conflicted. Their unit especially knows the importance of aftercare and Joan is doing a terrible job of hiding the fact that she didn't get any. But Montrose nods. "If anyone were to find out, it wouldn't be from me."

"Thank you."

Joan works her next three cases with Major Crimes. It's a coincidence, not through any deliberate action on her part, but she finds herself grateful for the short break.

The next time she goes to Missing Persons, Montrose slips her a piece of paper with the names and contact information for four different counselors. "Not just for you, but for the work," she says. "You're human. I don't expect anything more than that. But all humans need help sometimes."

~

Gregson begins the call with a temporizing hmm that puts her immediately on guard. "So, I hope you and Captain Montrose are still getting along okay," he says.

Joan drops her yogurt onto the counter from a little higher than she means to. "Sherlock's back."

"He's not alone, either."

Joan frowns. It can't be Gareth. He just called a week ago from Rio. He does that regularly, sometimes needing a nudge or a little pep talk. She hasn't gotten around to telling him about Sherlock leaving for MI6, but she's told him about some of her Missing Persons cases.

"He brought along this woman, Kitty Winter. Apparently he taught her his methods years ago in London. She seems sharp."

Joan lets out a startled laugh. The thought of replacing him never occurred to her. But then, she travels in different circles. She wouldn't know where to even begin looking.

Also, she realizes, she would never want to.

"You'll be all right, Joan?"

Joan tears off a paper towel, takes a spoon out of the utensil drawer. "Not all that much has changed, really. I'll miss you guys, though."

"You saying you're skipping out on the barbeque next week? Cheryl was excited about having you over. She says you're the only underling I got who reads real books and not just detective stories."

"Oh, no, I'll be there. Wouldn't miss it."

~

The favored watering hole of half the cops from the 11th precinct would not be her first choice for where to spend a Saturday evening, but Hawes, the medical examiner, has a report she needs and he begged her to meet him there and not make him stay in the morgue for one second longer. She exchanges friendly nods and a few greetings with some. From one of the pool tables, Basken calls out to her. "Joan! How great to see you. Come on over."

Joan shakes hands with him and another of the detectives as she spots Hawes chatting with two people at the pinball machine. He hasn't noticed her yet.

"Nice to see you again," Joan says. "Jeffords, Basken. Nash." Nash burps loud enough for the sound to travel over the jukebox. She's a little impressed. It's not even seven pm.

"So Joan," Basken says, gesturing to a young white woman standing next him, the only unknown quantity in the group. "Meet-"

"Ms. Winter," Joan supplies, offering her hand. "I'm Joan-"

"Watson," she says, her smile growing as she takes Joan's hand in a firm, friendly grasp. "Lovely to make your acquaintance. I've heard so much about you. Marcus and Tom have told several stories."

 _Marcus and Tom_ , Joan's brain helpfully echoes. Ms. Winter sounds very comfortable.

Good for her. "And probably most of them are even true," Joan says, laughing lightly. All around her shoulders drop several inches, some with disappointment and some with relief. She would sigh if she saw the point. Looking for a catfight. There's a reason none of these people are on the list of the colleagues she stayed in touch with.

"Have you any advice for an investigator still finding her way?" There's a light in her eyes that Joan isn't sure she likes. If she were a child, Joan would have labeled it mischievous. On an adult, she can't help but find it calculating.

"Learn as much as you can." Because you never know when your partner will sabotage things until they're unsalvageable. Hawes looks at her and lifts his bag. Joan makes an apologetic sort of hand-wave at the group. "Duty calls. And on that note," she says over her shoulder. "You're welcome to try a case or two with me at Missing Persons."

"What about Sherlock?" Ms. Winter asks.

"I think he's learned all he can from me," Joan answers. Basken hides a grin. Okay, she did like him a little.

~

A little bird informs her when Kitty Winter departs their shores. "Such a strange situation," Ms. Hudson says over her cup of tea. "I mean, a _baron_."

"Thanks," Joan says. "But I'd rather not hear about it."

"Oh." Ms. Hudson flushes. "Of course, Joan. I'm so sorry."

Joan quirks her mouth sympathetically, moving forward in her seat. "You know, you haven't shown me any of your photos from Pompeii. Did you even take any? Or were you too busy canoodling with that Dutch professor, what was his name?"

Ms. Hudson smothers a giggle with one manicured hand, looking so happy Joan wants to cheer out loud. "Arjen. His name is Arjen. And you know that was more about helping me with my thesis, shush."

"Which he is still doing," Joan says.

" _Shush_ ," Ms. Hudson insists, unable to keep the beaming smile off her face.

~

Joan is on a fourth floor fire escape, utterly focused on a series of scratches that might mean something, she isn't sure.

There is a three second squeak of the window opening before the small space is invaded by a head, shoulders, and then two hands that push her with enough force to send her over the railing.

~

Joan goes to work on Thursday, a whole human being who rarely jogs less than five miles and gives her doctor almost nothing to say during check-ups. She rouses partially the following Monday missing a spleen, a tube down her throat helping her breathe, and her left arm and leg in traction.

 _Always hated this dream_ , she thinks fuzzily. She makes abortive movements, trying to jerk herself awake.

"Shhh." Her mom strokes her hair, tears shining in her eyes. "Rest, baby. It's okay. We'll be here when you wake up."

~

A woman in a denim jacket and Ann Taylor slacks walks into her hospital room. Joan removes her earbuds with her good hand (Funny, how her vocabulary has evolved. "Good" is now only used in place of "functioning".) and favors her with a nod.

"Rocking out?" she asks.

"Just an audiobook," Joan replies. One of several gifts from Alfredo, but she isn't about to share the significance with a stranger. "Um, hi. Can I help you?"

"You're not expecting me?" she says, looking uneasy. "My name is Mia Morales. The visiting nurse? I'm contracted to work with you for the next six weeks."

Six weeks. Joan wonders if that's just a coincidence, or if it was intentional.

As soon as Ms. Morales leaves, Joan calls Sherlock up to say, in a very Joan way, fuck you and fuck your guilt. The silence goes on for so long she thinks he may have left the phone on the table and wandered off to some project or another (something he has done to her on multiple occasions). Just as she's about to hang up, he stretches out a sad sigh. "Watson, has your opinion of me sunk so low that you think I wouldn't want to help you if not for the mistakes I made?"

Joan squeezes her eyes shut, cutting off the tears. She forgot he could do this, drop his defenses and sound so earnest and heartfelt there's no mistaking that he cares.

"I'm aware that you're currently in a situation that causes no end of discomfort, not only physically but emotionally," he says, getting his words out in a rush to prevent her from interrupting him. "You don't enjoy putting people in a position to disappoint you, so you're averse to asking for assistance. Yet without leaning on someone, you face weeks of subsisting in a dreary rehabilitation facility after your discharge. Is that truly your preference?"

"You know too much about what's going on with me," she protests instead of answering.

"That is not entirely my fault," he says. "Mutual friends provide me with bits of ammunition, if you will. Sometimes I ask for it, yes, but often I don't have to ask."

"I-" She sniffs loudly, wiping at her cheeks with a tissue. "You should have said something to me first."

"You're right. I- I'm sorry. I'm learning."

"Learning," she repeats.

"It is possible. I did learn to stay off drugs that second time without your assistance."

Then she does hang up. She's always suspected Sherlock relapsed somewhere along the way, but to have it confirmed so blithely and matter of fact drums up a complicated swell of emotions. Underneath the guilt of an absentee care-giver, the wounded professional pride, the uncomfortable reminder of similarities to Liam, she feels the strangest sense of...relief. Sherlock Holmes used drugs again, the world kept on turning, and later he went back to not using. Without her.

~

The second time Mia comes to her home, Joan asks how long she was in the military.

"Thirteen years," she answers, a smile in her voice as she continues washing Joan's hair. "It's funny you noticed that. Mr. Holmes said it's why he hired me. According to him, it was vitally important that your carer be well-versed in combat techniques."

Joan nearly laughs, hearing his voice saying the words. "He gets protective," she says. It hurts a little less, mentioning him now.

"Little does he know, I got more relevant combat experience from raising two boys to college-age all on my own."

~

Joan thinks she likes Mia's laugh, the hefty chunk of Queens in her accent, and the way her hand wraps around her hair as she puts half her curls up in a barrette, showing off her emerald earrings.

Transference, Joan diagnoses, and she doesn't let herself make too much of the times Mia sits with her watching Golden Girls, talking about how Dorothy was her idol.

"She's a walking No Bullshit zone," Mia says. "And she doesn't apologize for it once. You can't not admire that."

Mia is with her the day Joan has to return to the hospital for another round of surgeries. When she wakes up in recovery, Mia's warmth comes through in her smile, lighting up the entire room. And her eyes are a little red. Really, Joan isn't just projecting there.

 _Counter-transference_ , she thinks, and she stops fighting the lingering effects of the anesthesia.

~

"My nurse is unreasonably attractive," Joan grumbles.

On the other side of the couch, Marcus tears his attention away from the NCAA game. "Like half a bone in your body that's not broken and that's what you pick out as a problem?" He looks comfortable and ridiculously young in a faded t-shirt with a fraying collar emblazoned with his high school and year of graduation, just to confirm how horrifyingly young he actually is.

Joan stares at the game without taking in a single detail. "I think I might have feelings for her, and maybe she does for me, too, I don't know. But it's totally inappropriate."

"Because she's the one who changes your bandages and makes you do your PT," he says, getting it immediately. A few times, when Joan has been the right combination of well enough to manage and dirty enough to want it, he's helped her into the shower. Her love for him is all encompassing and almost wholly uncomplicated by lascivious thoughts. (She's been on morphine. She can't be held responsible for what dreams come out of that.) "What if you waited until after she stops being your nurse?"

That sounds almost too logical. "Well, I-"

She's interrupted by the buzz of the intercom. Marcus narrows his eyes at her and she lifts a shoulder.

"You don't have to order food every time I come over," he says. "I don't need payment for being here."

She looks away, momentarily vulnerable under his gaze before she thinks about it. She's learning, too, to lie back and trust people to do for her what she can't do for herself, to articulate her feelings better, especially when her needs aren't being met, rather than staying silent (or close to silent) and letting the resentment grow.

"It's a nice thing to do," she says. It's not misplaced obligation, it's appreciation. "Anyway, I was craving chicken enchiladas. The Tex-Mex place around the corner is only six dollars a plate and you need to spend at least fifteen to get delivery."

Andre comes through the front door, the takeout bags resting on top of a laundry basket full of her now clean sweats and pajamas. "Dinner, huh?" he asks. "Good! I was getting hungry and--no offense Joan, but I had your ziti a while back--neither y'all can cook for shit."

Joan bursts out laughing.

~

"You know, you could come over," Joan says. "Almost everyone I know has at least once. I've had three priests in here at different times. Well, one minister, one priest, and a Tibetan monk. That's not as random as it sounds--they're all cousins of mine."

She stops rambling and waits for Sherlock to remind her of the threat (no, promise) she once made, to throw her anger back in her face and highlight how weak she is now.

"I am not the most skilled conversationalist," he says. "One of the world's foremost debaters and lecturers, but that is not the same thing. When it comes to more casual give and take with no purpose in mind, I tend to draw mainly from one well."

"Where are you going with this?" Joan says.

"Investigations. The field you and I both share, but it's become rather a thorny subject. Something of a minefield, really."

She gets it. He can't talk about any case from London because London is where he chose to go when he abandoned her. Mentioning anything from their time together might serve as a painful reminder of what they once had or what she can't do now. And of course everything during the Ms. Winter period is fraught with triggers.

"I don't wish to upset you," he confesses. She almost asks when that happened, but she knows. Probably sometime during the four days she spent in a coma. "You like to walk away from subjects with which you prefer not to engage, but you've lost that ability for the moment. And I don't want you to feel the need to eject me from your home, again."

"What if I'm willing to risk it?"

"Expect me within the hour, Watson."

~

Joan takes a sip of juice that goes down the wrong pipe, triggering a round of coughing that ignites a fire kept dormant by decreasing levels of pain medication. Joan visualizes a number. It's six--six and a half. It won't stay that high. She pushes air in, pushes it out.

Five. 

She keeps trying.

As three slides down to two, she lie there, spent, her vision gray at the edges.

 _Wait_ , she thinks after she closes her eyes, but she's too far gone to remember why she should.

She blinks awake, still on the couch but now she's propped up by several pillows and covered by the comforter from her bed. Sherlock. She smiles, feeling like she should be more surprised. In a few minutes, she'll find her phone and thank him for looking after her, maybe pledge to be a better host next time.

There's a noise up near the kitchen. Joan squints.

"Feeling better?" Sherlock says, coming over. "Your breathing was somewhat labored when I arrived. I nearly contacted Ms. Morales."

"I'm better, yeah. Thanks." Joan tries not to say she's fine anymore. She's no longer ashamed not to be. "You stayed."

Sherlock places a glass of water on the coffee table in front of her. "Yes. Well. My turn was long overdue."


End file.
